This is some ferocious stuff right here man. It looks like Iraqi forces were on the receiving end unfortunately??

Oooohhhhh look at the money shot I got onthis screen grab! You can see the shell leaving the damn cannon. Brilliant!! So we got some nice Iraqi
artillery laying some siege on ISIS positions, dozens of individual mortars, even a good shot of an MLRS firing rockets. Round it off with a convoy of
police and militia forces proceeding on with their push.

“The timing of this battle is political, not military,” Col. Abdullah Mirza, commander of the medical company
says diplomatically, refusing to speculate on the reasons the fight is taking place now.

When not quoted by name, Kurdish officers are much less circumspect. “It’s clear that we’re going to war now so that Obama can say he’s
liberated Mosul before he leaves the White House,” says one. Many of them are calling the operation, which has not received an official name,
"Operation Obama."

The role of the Americans in this battle isn’t always clear. Crossing the battlefields and barren plains are “the Ameriki” – teams of U.S.
special forces whose uniforms without insignia are similar to the peshmerga’s. The Americans, who even carry Kalashnikovs instead of U.S.-made
rifles, disappear into their vehicles the moment media cameras appear on the scene.

They stand out with their bush hats, immaculate weapons, new jeeps and armored vehicles. No one is sure of their exact objective and the role
they’re playing against the Islamic State. The heavy lifting – clearing Islamic State fighters from thousands of streets and buildings of Mosul
and the surrounding villages – can only be done by the local forces.
The enemy is also cloaked in mystery. When Islamic State fighters are captured alive, as often happens, it’s hard for their captors to identify them
by name.

“ISIS takes away the identification papers and passports from all its fighters,” an Iraqi officer says. “When we interrogate them, many of them
won’t give their names or say where they’re from, just ‘I’m from the Islamic State.’ From their accents, many of them are Sunni or Turkomen
Iraqis. But we’ve captured quite a few Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccans, as well as quite a few Chechens from Russia. Also a few Europeans. We
contact their governments to try to identify them.”

It seems the Shiite militias are sealing off Western Mosul in an effort to prevent daesh fighters from escaping.

Iraqi Shi'ite militias launched an offensive toward the west of Mosul on Saturday, an operation that will tighten the noose around Islamic
State's Iraq stronghold but has alarmed Turkey and could inflame tensions in the mainly Sunni area.

A spokesman for the Shi'ite militias, known as the Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) forces, said thousands of fighters "started operations this
morning to clean up the hotbeds of Daesh (Islamic State) in the western parts of Mosul".

Turkey is displease and issues warnings. As if they have the final say so over what happens outside of their borders where they have no business
deploying thousands of troops and tanks.

But their deployment close to the border with neighboring Turkey prompted a warning from President Tayyip Erdogan, who said Ankara aims to
reinforce its troops on the frontier and threatened a "different response" for the militias if they "unleash terror" in Tal Afar.

Turkish troops have been training Sunni tribal combatants at an Iraqi camp northeast of Mosul, but a spokesman for the Shi'ite militias said earlier
on Saturday the Turks were in no position to obstruct their advance.

Damn guys shot up an innocent taxi driver because they thought he was a bomber. But its a damn war zone and the man was not listening to instructions
to sit and stop. Poor bastard, killers behind him, killers in front. Sometimes you cant o anything but die I guess.

ISIS: Reporting From The Front Lines.. The Liberation Of Mosul Is A Mini Documentary On The War Against The Islamic State In Iraq The Liberation Of
Mosul.
Reporters riding with heavy assaults on daesh positions, and some stops to see how some IDP's are doing.

ISIS: The Battle For Mosul.. A Rare Look Inside ISIS Front Lines.. Real War
This video footage shows the battle of Mosul through the eyes of The Islamic State as they release their own video of war footage..

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